De La Hoya says GGG missed deadline for Canelo, “There is no fight”

By Sean Jones: Oscar De La Hoya says Gennady Golovkin missed the 24 hour deadline to agree to the 12 noon 57½-42½ purse split offer that was due today for the Saul Canelo Alvarez fight in September. De La Hoya says GGG doesn’t want the fight, so it’s now 100 percent dead in the water. However, the negotiations are still going on despite De La Hoya’s drama-filled pronouncements, and it’s still possible that the fight can done for September 15.

Golovkin has already agreed to back off the 50-50 purse split that he was asking for the fight. He’s dropped down to 55-45 after taking an embarrassingly lose 70-30 split for the first last year. Golden Boy are willing to give GGG 42 ½ percent offer but, but if you factor in the lose 30 percent offer Golovkin got in the first fight, it’s still not a great deal.

The only deal that would make up for the low percentage GGG got in the first fight would be for him to get a 50-50 deal. Anything less than a 50-50 deal would be a bad deal for Golovkin. He was arguably robbed by the judges in his fight with Canelo on September 16. Had the judges scored it in Golovkin’s favor, he would be negotiating from a power of strength in asking for a bigger cut of the revenue. On top of that, Canelo tested positive for clenbuterol twice while training for their May 5 rematch.

The Plan-B option for Golden Boy is to match Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) against former middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs. That’s not a good deal if you’re the 5’8” Canelo, because he’s not going to make as much money fighting Jacobs as he would Golovkin, and the risk is just about s high for him. Jacobs, 5’11 ½”, is even taller than Golovkin and he packs a huge punch and he’s especially good at beating short fighters like Canelo.

“No fight; There is no fight,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. “We want the fight, Tom Loeffler wants the fight. Cleverly the only person here who doesn’t want the fight is GGG. The fans want the fight. We bent over backwards. We’ve come up and there’s no budge from him so there’s no fight. 100 percent there is no fight,” De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez are seemingly playing games with their 24 hour deadline for Golovkin, which comes across as demeaning. If they want the fight, giving a deadline is perhaps the most foolish way of trying to get it. That kind of tactic might work when dealing with a needy contender, but not with a popular world champion like Golovkin. Canelo is the one that tested positive twice for clenbuterol, and he’s the one that appeared to lose the fight last time against GGG.

“This is final,” Gomez said to ESPN.com about the 57½-42½ purse split offer to Triple G for the Canelo rematch. ”No more playing games; He has until noon (PT) to accept or walk away. If he walks away, good luck to him. [I] told him [Tom Loeffler] you have 24 hours to accept or we are fighting Danny Jacobs,” Gomez said.